Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation on Monday named Gordon Conway, vice chancellor of the University of Sussex in England, as its new president, the first time the post has gone to a non-U.S. citizen. His selection "underlines the [foundation's] commitment to a global agenda," Conway said in an interview. "What we are looking to do is synthesize domestic and international [programs] which have been traditional in the foundation, start to look at all we do with a global lens."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined the Rockefeller Foundation on Tuesday in a new plan to fight hunger in Africa, beginning with a joint $150-million pledge to improve agricultural productivity. Officials at the two foundations said the money was just the beginning of a much bigger effort to bring the "green revolution" to Africa.

The Rockefeller Foundation Wednesday announced a 15-year plan to adapt Western science and technology to alleviate poverty in developing countries. As much as $300 million will be committed in the first five years to "the equitable distribution of benefits inherent in scientific advance and technological innovation," President Richard W. Lyman said in Manhattan.

He is the very model of the modern self-made millionaire. Standing on the front steps of his Brentwood manse, overseeing construction of the new garden that will bloom where once his next-door neighbor's house stood, he is tanned and fit and, at 56, young to possess such wealth from his own earnings. But Richard Atlas is one of many who reaped the benefits of the go-go '80s and survived the leaner years that followed.

Steven D. Lavine, associate director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, has been named successor to Robert J. Fitzpatrick as president of the California Institute of the Arts. The appointment was announced Tuesday by Jon B. Lovelace, chairman of the Valencia institution's board of trustees. Lavine, who holds a doctorate in English and American literature from Harvard University, will assume the post in late June.

The Rockefeller Foundation announced Saturday that it had chosen Peter C. Goldmark Jr., a senior vice president of Times Mirror Co., as its new president and chief executive officer. Goldmark, 47, will assume his new duties in July as head of one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious philanthropic organizations. "This was an impossible challenge to turn down," said Goldmark, whose duties at Times Mirror included being in charge of the company's five Eastern newspapers.

One of the nation's most influential foundations has filed court papers arguing that political turmoil that led to anti-obscenity restrictions on the National Endowment for the Arts risks poisoning the atmosphere that has led to billions of dollars in private support for the arts in the last 25 years. The filing of papers by the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation--a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit against the NEA--was made public Thursday.

Private foundations will be unable to fill in the gap if Congress goes through with proposals to cut by 40% its funding of the National Endowments for Arts and Humanities, putting at risk the enormous growth in American culture since the agencies were created 30 years ago, according to research by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Richard W. Lyman, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and president emeritus of Stanford University, will return to Stanford next Sept. 1 as the first director of its Institute of International Studies, the university announced. Lyman, a historian, served as Stanford's president from 1970 to 1980, when he became head of the foundation. He faces mandatory retirement from his Rockefeller Foundation post next year when he turns 65.

* Monsanto Co., whose genetically modified seeds have raised environmental and health concerns among some European consumers, said it would not commercialize the controversial "terminator" gene technology that sterilizes seeds. In a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Chairman Robert Shapiro said the company decided not to develop the gene after seeking comment from the foundation and other groups.

There is, in the National Portrait Gallery, a paleplaster bust of a sag-shouldered man with snaky eyes, sunken cheeks and straitened lips. If the sculpture weren't labeled, you might never guess that this wizened little guy was John D. Rockefeller Sr.--the ruthless 19th century American kerosene king who made millions and built an oil-refining monopoly by conspiring with railroads, quashing the competition, bribing government officials and skirting the law.

The Rockefeller Foundation on Monday named Gordon Conway, vice chancellor of the University of Sussex in England, as its new president, the first time the post has gone to a non-U.S. citizen. His selection "underlines the [foundation's] commitment to a global agenda," Conway said in an interview. "What we are looking to do is synthesize domestic and international [programs] which have been traditional in the foundation, start to look at all we do with a global lens."

Private foundations will be unable to fill in the gap if Congress goes through with proposals to cut by 40% its funding of the National Endowments for Arts and Humanities, putting at risk the enormous growth in American culture since the agencies were created 30 years ago, according to research by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Exactly 50 years ago, a Nobel laureate physicist published a tiny book whose title asked a simple question: "What Is Life?" Erwin Schrodinger, a creator of the quantum physics that was then leading the world inexorably toward the atomic bomb, wondered what role his science could play in explaining the nature of living things. "How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism," he asked, "be accounted for by physics and chemistry?"

* Monsanto Co., whose genetically modified seeds have raised environmental and health concerns among some European consumers, said it would not commercialize the controversial "terminator" gene technology that sterilizes seeds. In a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Chairman Robert Shapiro said the company decided not to develop the gene after seeking comment from the foundation and other groups.

He is the very model of the modern self-made millionaire. Standing on the front steps of his Brentwood manse, overseeing construction of the new garden that will bloom where once his next-door neighbor's house stood, he is tanned and fit and, at 56, young to possess such wealth from his own earnings. But Richard Atlas is one of many who reaped the benefits of the go-go '80s and survived the leaner years that followed.

The Rockefeller Foundation Monday announced a $1-million prize--one of the largest in medicine--for development of an easy, low cost diagnostic test for two sexually transmitted diseases which strike more than 75 million people worldwide. The diseases, chlamydia and gonorrhea, can be cured relatively easily with antibiotics if discovered, but can lead to serious complications, including infant blindness, if left untreated.